Contributors

Monday, September 13, 2010

And so how did we get here? Big question I know. I’ll try to be more specific. How did we get to a place where believing in controlling the national borders and that building an Islamic “community center” next to the spot where 3000 people were brutally murdered in the name of Islam is insensitive and should not (that’s should not, not can not) be done are equated with anti-immigration and anti-Islamism. I think, as with many things these days, it’s political.

The immigration issue has been with us for as long as I can remember, and much farther back in time than that. The federal government has laws on the books making it illegal to reside in the country without going through a specified process, but employers have been hungry for cheap, eager labor and so it has been policy for decades to simply ignore the rules even though they are part of our federal code. But now the immigration climate has changed. The world economy is in the tank, and our nation and it’s citizens are threatened by Latin American gangs bent on organizing and controlling criminal activity in our cities and very ready and willing to use the most brutal tactics available. The same is true of groups from the former Soviet Union who find that our openness and civil liberties provide a comfortable existence. Our nation is also at war and under attack by Islamic extremists. On top of the obviously threatening, there are the 10s, 100s of thousands of people who simply want the chance at a better life that America has always promised. So. With all of this, how is it that ANYONE could be against a well controlled border and an immigration policy that has actually been thought out? When I take my child to the neighborhood swimming pool, I’m not anti-wetness if I want for there to be well defined and enforced rules and supervision. I am not anti fun, I’m anti tragedy. I’m a firm believer that we can have the one, without the other. But today it seems that the goal is not the orderly enforcement of existing immigration laws, but the successful recruitment of new voting members of the Democrat party.

We have been presented with evidence that radical Islam can be a threat to the US and its interests since the take over of the US embassy in Iran in 1979. More recently, the truck bombing of the World Trade center in 1994 was not recognized for the attempted destruction of the World Trade Center that it was. But we still just kept on like always. You be you, I’ll be me. It’s the American way. Embassy bombings in Africa, the attack on the USS Cole, and we just keep on keep’n on. And then September 11, 2001. Al Qaida used the very freedoms that we enjoy and our negligence of our own laws to strike at our very heart. And STILL a nominally conservative President went out of his way to point out that we are NOT at war with Islam, but a radical offshoot of that religion. So what has changed that now, suddenly, 70% of Americans are depicted as being anti-Islamic? I think I know the answer. It’s the same reason that supporters of the Tea Party movement are portrayed as being racist. It’s a “main stream” media that doesn’t like or have any respect for average Americans. If you disagree with the President, you’re a racist. (Even if you voted for him) If you oppose the construction of the Islamic “community center” (the Cordoba initiative) on the grounds that it would be insensitive then you’re an Islamophobe. If you favor the strict control of the nations borders like you find in every other nation in the world then you’re anti-immigration.

And the President isn’t helping matters. When the issue is border control he wants to turn the issue to race. When the issue is national sensitivity to a wound that will be generations in healing he wants to call it Islamophobia. He pulls the Constitution card, as if he weren’t willing to discard it just as easily, and claims the Imam has the right to build wherever he wants, but then doesn’t quite know what to do when some small time pastor and the inevitable copy cats want to burn Qurans. Rights aren’t the issue here. The issue is the sensitivity to the feelings of others. It harms the Imam and his followers not at all to select another site blocks away. It would be a nod to the American people, a gesture that recognizes that our feelings matter, a bridge. But instead what we see is intransigence. I’m sorry, but it is my firm belief that the goal of the Cordoba project is the construction of an Islamic shrine, mosque, “community center” on the figurative foundations of the World Trade Center just as the Great Mosque was built on the ruins of the church of St. Vincent in Cordoba. The symbolism is too obvious to be a coincidence, or to ignore.

So is it the American people who are xenophobic in all aspects our lives, or are we just portrayed that way by people who are better educated and more enlightened?